let us eat drink and be merry

0. On Thursday I had a dinner with some ISCF friends from my batch (particularly those who are still wandering around NTU) in Ayam Penyet Ria and a Hong Kong dessert stall (I forgot its name) in Jurong Point. Ming initiated the event by sending an email to all of us, but in the end we settled everything through text messages (!). Really blessed by the conversation during dinner and dessert.

1. I went to NUS-ISCF fellowship on Friday to speak to the first year students. It’s my first time being there, and it means I’ve gone to NTU-, NUS-, and SMU-ISCF fellowship, each having their own uniqueness. SMU’s is small and sweet and the students really like to talk, NUS’s is bigger yet I can’t say much for now, and NTU’s is large — but it’s still sweet (bias alert!). There were around 25 students who came to the fellowship, and all of us sat in a huge circle (it was reminiscent of NTU prayer meeting).

3. Setelah PU, kami makan malam bersama di Clementi: gw, Ming, Alison, Hezron, dan Ridwan (don’t ask me why the last two came to NUS). It was a very fun conversation. I guess that night Ming, Hezron, and Ridwan knew the other side of me and Alison; the evil one.

7. Kemudian aku menemani Bang Denni ke GPBB, soalnya dia bakal menjadi pembicara di PP. Kami sempat mampir dulu di toko buku BGST, karena ada yang nitip Alkitab NIV sama dia. Now you know what does temptation mean when you feel exactly the same way every time you went to a bookstore. I didn’t succumb to it, though (it means twice in a day!).

8. Kami sampai di GPBB cukup tepat waktu, sekitar lima belas menit sebelum PP dimulai. Temanya hari itu ‘There is no salvation outside the church?’, sebuah dogma tradisi Katolik Roma yang juga populer dengan istilah Latin-nya extra ecclesiam nulla salus. And I believe the approach of Bang Denni is ingenious. Instead of trying to explain what the ‘church’ means in order for the phrase to be true (the more common Protestant approach; say, with differentation between visible and invisible church), Bang DBS mutated what does ‘salvation’ means, then, in order for the phrase to be true. And he did it with a re-reading of the Ephesians.